Michelle Obama’s Becoming book tour has been quite the hit so far, but at Saturday night’s Washington, D.C. stop a special guest brought the event to a whole other level.

Michelle’s husband, former president Barack Obama, strolled onstage with flowers in-hand to surprise his wife and the entire Capital One Arena audience.

And since his former White House advisor Valerie Jarrett was moderating the conversation, he decided to stay and chat for a bit about the book and his love for his wife.

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If you watched Saturday Night Live‘s Thanksgiving episode you know a mini reunion for The Office took place and it was glorious. But it wasn’t alone.

Turns out Angela Kinsey and Kate Flannery, who played Angela and Meredith, respectively, on the show, were hanging out on Saturday night, too!

Kinsey dropped by Flannery and Jane Lynch’s “A Swingin’ Little Christmas” show on Saturday night and blessed fans of The Office with a few photos and videos on her Instagram story. Perfect timing, girls!

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If you’ve been at the internet at all today, you’ve probably seen the words “Black Friday” more times than you would have predicted for it being the day after Halloween.

Nov. 1 kicks off deals season now according to Best Buy, Walmart, Amazon, and numerous other retailers duking it out with super early gift deals. But Target had even bigger plans: They’re among the first of the big guys to drop their official 2018 Black Friday ad. To really put the nail in the coffin, they also put Instant Pots, Beats headphones, and more premium stuff on a one-day-only sale. Freaking out is totally acceptable. Read more…

More about Home, Kitchen, Mashable Shopping, Shopping Solo, and Instant Pot

Hey, if you lost your bedazzled pigeon, he’s safe and sound at a bird sanctuary in Arizona. 

A young male pigeon, inexplicably dressed in a rhinestone-studded vest, was found in Glendale, Arizona on Nov. 10. He’s been under the care of Fallen Feathers ever since. 

“He’s very friendly and fits on your finger,” Fallen Feathers director Jody Kieran told AZ Central.

She posted a photo of the bird and his impossibly tiny get up on the sanctuary’s Facebook page on Sunday. 

“If you know the owner we have your friend here waiting,” the post says.  Read more…

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Gritty continues to be the chaotic voice of resistance. 

The colorful Philadelphia Flyers mascot, also our collective son whom we love and cherish, was the face of an anti-Proud Boy protest on Saturday. 

About two dozen members of the misogynistic alt-right Proud Boys showed up for a “We the People” rally, according to the Daily Beast. They were met with hundreds of protestors who wielded Gritty signs like a crucifix against a vampire. 

The Proud Boys, a group cooked up by Vice co-founder Gavin McInnes, promote violence and preach masculinity above all else; the Southern Poverty Law Center calls the group an alt-right “fight club.” Although McInnes has attempted to distance the Proud Boys from white supremacist groups, its members have attended violent rallies like the one in Charlottesville. One of the group’s more notable rules includes not allowing its members to masturbate more than once a month.  Read more…

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Apple would probably rather skip the references to Bendgate. It’s not like anyone’s walking around with an iPad Pro in their pocket, right?

That may be true, but it’s still alarming to see just how fragile the newly released iPad Pro actually is. YouTuber JerryRigEverything put the tablet through a multi-part stress test, including the damning bend test, and he was left with a mangled wreck of an Apple device.

This is a great video to check out if you’re mulling a new tablet purchase. While, yes, the iPad Pro is hardly pocket-sized, it’s very easy to imagine things getting bendy if someone were to accidentally sit on one. Read more…

More about Tech, Apple, Ipad Pro, Ipad Pro 2018, and Tech

Kids in Texas will finally learn that slavery was the primary reason for all the fighting during the Civil War, and people can’t believe it took the state this long to decide that. 

The state Board of Education confirmed that starting in 2019, public school curricula will include the fact that slavery played a “central role” in the war. During the vote Friday, the board also added Hellen Keller and Hillary Clinton back to the lesson plans. The two women were controversially removed in September in an effort to “streamline” the statewide standards. 

More about Education, Culture, and Web Culture

Commentator Bill Maher disparaged Stan Lee, the seminal creator of iconic comic book superheroes like Spider-Man, The Hulk, and The Fantastic Four, in an unsolicited 293-word Saturday morning blog titled “Adulting.”

Twitter was quick to rebut Maher’s cultural musings after he mocked the late Lee’s widely-appreciated work, belittled millions of people who value comics, and broadly labeled comics as “stupid stuff.”

“I’m not saying we’ve necessarily gotten stupider,” Maher wrote, before adding, “The problem is, we’re using our smarts on stupid stuff.” 

Distilling decades of comic book history, culture, and meaning down to a short, oversimplified opinion is naturally going provoke the ire of the public, especially those who possess a greater familiarity of both comics and Lee’s intellectual influence.  Read more…

More about Entertainment, Comic Books, Stan Lee, Marvel Comics, and Bill Maher

Critics everywhere have slammed the latest Harry Potter spin-off, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, as there’s an absurd amount of confounding plot crammed into the 134-minute film. 

Yet, the film carries a problematic canonical oversight, too: Minerva McGonagall briefly appears as a young-adult wizarding instructor at Hogwarts in 1927. The trouble is, according to Harry Potter lore, she wouldn’t have even been born at that point.

More about Entertainment, Movies, Harry Potter, Fantastic Beasts The Crimes Of Grindelwald, and Entertainment

Dogs is the smartest six-hour Netflix binge anyone can commit to. It’s also, notably, a safe watch for all dog-lovers.

If you, like anyone who has ever owned and/or loved a dog, saw the Dogs announcement and immediately wondered if any of the documentary’s sweet good boys and girls die, Netflix has an answer for you. No. No one dies.

Netflix confirmed the happy detail on Twitter.

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